There has been conventionally well known an ECR system for use in food-service business that, in a restaurant for example, articles such as dishes ordered by a customer for a meal (sometimes referred to as articles, hereinafter) are registered as a menu in the ECR so that the ECR sends a cooking instruction on the basis of the registered menu to a display or a printer installed in the kitchen of the restaurant, whereby cooks prepare these dishes by predetermined recipe according to the cooking instruction to serve the meal ordered by the customer.
FIG. 4 is a flowchart for explaining the operation of such a prior art ECR system used as above.
In more detail, with the prior art ECR system, when dish articles ordered by a customer are entered in the ECR system, the system first issues a customer order slip in step ST-51 and then sends to the kitchen cooking instructions for all articles ordered by the customer at one time in step ST-52.
The above prior art ECR system, which issues a customer order slip and then sends to the kitchen cooking instructions for all articles ordered by the customer at one time, however, has a problem that, when a cook tries to provide the respective dishes to the customer in their best state, he personally must judge the cooking start time of the respective dish articles. As a result when he wrongly judges the cooking start time, the respective dishes are delayed to be served or deteriorated in quality.
More specifically, in such a case, the customer often complains by saying, "We ordered our dishes at the same time, but the dish for my companion is not served yet", "since you served my child's dish is delayed, he or she became fretful", "your served dishes are cold", "among the foods placed on the plate, the hamburger is warm enough but the garnishings are cold", or "the soup or salad to be served first was served together with the main dish."
The cook, on the other hand, also has complaints such as "when I have too many orders, I cannot correctly judge the cooking start time of the respective order articles", "since it takes great experience to determine the cooking start time an experienced, a cook such as a part time cook cannot judge it", and "since the cooking start time is determined by a human, his fatigue or misjudgement might produce an error."